Adani’s big data centre bet

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Editor's note: On 4 November last year, the Adani group opened its first data centre in Chennai. It plans to open six more in the next three years, and many more in the course of a decade, taking its capacity to 1 gigawatt by 2030. These are ambitious plans for a group that has till now focused its energies on commodities and infrastructure. Data centres—large facilities a company uses to house its own servers or rents out to clients, and whose capacity is measured in terms of the power they consume—require large investments on hardware, land and technology. Besides, they are power guzzlers and need high-speed internet connectivity.  What then is making the Ahmedabad-based group take such a large bet on a high-technology space it has no experience in?     The answer is a combination of reasons. One, India’s data centre capacity is expected to double to 1,700-1,800 megawatts by 2025, with more than 183 data centres. The market itself will be worth $10 billion by 2027, compared to $4.35 billion as of 2021, according to market research firm Arizton. Second, India’s digital …